This article evaluates a series of empirical studies on rural areas that examine and report the main aspects associated with the answers people mobilize in order to ensure family subsistence in face of the adverse effects of climate change. The objective is to demonstrate that an inaccuracy persists in the concerned literature in what regards to the major notions in operation in those analyzes. Such characteristic causes distortions in the assessment of the environmental impacts on the systems affected by the change or transformation of natural cycles. More promising alternatives in this regard are those which incorporate the notion of causal chains, where the access or its restriction to the set of assets is understood as crucial in the construction of adaptive capacity and coping strategies of the population, especially people living in rural environments. Vulnerability is understood as a social and situational condition in which sets of endogenous and/or exogenous factors, at multiple scales and dimensions, influence each other.
Climate Change; Vulnerability; Adaptive Capacity